quaternary Review The Potential of Speleothems from Western Europe as Recorders of Regional Climate: A Critical Assessment of the SISAL Database Franziska A. Lechleitner 1,* , Sahar Amirnezhad-Mozhdehi 2 , Andrea Columbu 3 , Laia Comas-Bru 2,4 , Inga Labuhn 5 , Carlos Pérez-Mejías 6 and Kira Rehfeld 7 1 Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3AN, UK 2 UCD School of Earth Sciences, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland;
[email protected] (S.A.-M.);
[email protected] (L.C.-B.) 3 Department of Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences, University of Bologna, Via Zamboni 67, 40126 Bologna, Italy;
[email protected] 4 Centre for Past Climate Change and School of Archaeology, Geography & Environmental Sciences, Reading University, Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AH, UK 5 Institute of Geography, University of Bremen, Celsiusstrasse 2, 28359 Bremen, Germany;
[email protected] 6 Department of Geoenvironmental Processes and Global Change, Pyrenean Institute of Ecology (IPE–CSIC), Avda. Montañana 1005, 50059 Zaragoza, Spain;
[email protected] 7 Institute of Environmental Physics, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 229, 69210 Heidelberg, Germany;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected] Academic Editor: Sandy P. Harrison Received: 31 August 2018; Accepted: 30 November 2018; Published: 7 December 2018 18 18 Abstract: Western Europe is the region with the highest density of published speleothem δ O(δ Ospel) records worldwide. Here, we review these records in light of the recent publication of the Speleothem Isotopes Synthesis and AnaLysis (SISAL) database. We investigate how representative the spatial and temporal distribution of the available records is for climate in Western Europe and review potential sites and strategies for future studies.